[BOAI] Publisher FUD and author/funder/institution/IP-expert/Sherpa-Romeo Foolishness

[Stevan Harnad]

>
> *From: *[identity deleted]
> I've been tasked with chairing the OA working group at [deleted] and have
> found your blogs and articles incredibly helpful in trying to plot a way
> through the mess created by Finch/RCUK. I've been trying to push the
> University in the Green OA direction you have been recommending - that is,
> [depositing the] accepted versions [in] the institutional repository.
>


Yesterday a lengthy email appeared in my inbox, an extract from which is
> reproduced below.  It seems that Wiley are trying to forbid publication of
> the accepted version in an institutional repository (I think that they mean
> 'accepted version' in the last but one sentence, not 'submitted version').
> Can they do this if the version published in the repository is not in their
> typeface etc?
>



>> *Green OA: submitted version v accepted version*I think that more
>> understanding needs to be promoted about the difference between Green OA
>> with the submitted version [preprint] and with the accepted version and the
>> unsuitability of the former in some circumstances. I have a co-authored
>> article coming out with [deleted], published by Wiley. The research was not
>> RCUK-funded. Wiley's policy for this journal is that the only Green OA they
>> will permit is making available the submitted (pre-refereed) version of the
>> article [preprint]. This is obviously completely pointless as the article
>> has changed significantly as a result of the referees' reports. We
>> anticipate that there will be significant public interest in the article...
>> and so *we need to go Gold so that it is not hidden from* *most of the
>> public, journalists etc behind a subscription paywall*. I know that
>> there are plenty of other situations where (submitted version)  [preprint]
>> is fine - effectively it is putting a draft out there for comments.
>> However, that does not apply to our paper. Wiley have told us that the
>> Green OA [refereed, accepted postprint] option is not open to us. My sense
>> of it is that those who are pro-Green don't yet appreciate sufficiently
>> that the only version,,, that can be available at times can be completely
>> unsuitable.
>
>

Any help you can give would be welcome.


Dear [deleted],

Many thanks for your kind words about my (unheeded) words…

Wiley, like other formerly Green-friendly publishers, are now deliberately
putting up an almost
impenetrable smokescreen of variants and details in their OA policy in
order to confuse and deter authors.

This is all with the unwitting collaboration of funders, who themselves
adopt vague, varied and mutually
contradictoryOA policies, institutional IP “specialists” who give absurd
and arbitrary “legal” advice, and
SHERPA/Romeo, which slavishly canonizes and formally publicizes publishers’
every arbitrary whim as
if it made sense and desperately needed to be known and heeded by one and
all.


I’ve responded to every single subterfuge many a time, but here it is again:

*(1) The distinction between authors' “personal website” and their
“institutional repository” is bogus. Ignore it.*

*(2) Wiley (still) states that there is no OA embargo on the author’s
refereed, accepted final draft. *

*(3) Whenever minded to be intimidated by publisher FUD or compliant with
an OA embargo, deposit the final  **refereed, revised, revised, accepted
final draft immediately on acceptance for publication anyway, set access  **as
restricted-access instead of OA, **and rely on the repository’s
copy-request Button
<https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=xjY1VPzcGcOC8Qe54oCoCQ&gws_rd=ssl#q=OA+Button+request>
 **(one click from the requestor, **one click from the author) **to provide
almost-OA till the embargo elapses, **the FUD implodes, or  *
*authors/funders/institutions/IP-experts/Sherpa-Romeo **come to their
senses — whichever comes first.*


This is what the sensible authors of the 973,909 preprints* and
postprints* deposited
and made immediately OA in Arxiv
<http://arxiv.org/stats/monthly_submissions> (for example) have been doing,
unchallenged, since 1991, without begging the leave of anyone. The flurry
of FUD  since obligingly floated elsewhere has been inspired purely by
those who did not have the sense to do likewise.

Dixit,

Stevan Harnad
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